Current image from Terra Satellite, rotated 90 degrees to improve view, plus annotation and world view inset added by Anthony
Source image is available here at the NASA Terra website
Originally published 02:57 p.m., August 29, 2008
Updated 02:57 p.m., August 29, 2008
Santa can rest easy.
It’s looking like the ice at the North Pole won’t melt to water next month, as had been feared. It would have been the first time in thousands of years that the most northerly place on the planet would have been ice-free.
“It’s quite unlikely at this point,” Walt Meier a research scientist at the University of Colorado’s National Snow and Ice Data Center, said today.
The ice in the Arctic Ocean is at near historic lows, and breaks records every couple of years due to human-caused global warming, the scientists at NSIDC say.
This spring, it was looking like the ice might retreat so far that the North Pole itself would be ice-free for at least a day in September – the height of the ice-melt season.
The chances were great enough that the scientists at NSIDC were laying almost even odds on it in an office pool.
But while global warming is playing an important role, seasonal variability does, too. And this summer turned out to be a little cooler than last summer, when the record for ice retreat was set, Meier said.
“We only have about two or three weeks more of ice melt, and it’s not going to make it to the North Pole,” Meier said.
Read the rest of the article here
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Maybe The North Polar Ice Cap will not melt this year, but the high priest of global destruction said in his speech at the DNC Convention: “Oil company profits have soared to record levels, gasoline prices have gone through the roof and we are more dependent than ever on dirty and dangerous fossil fuels. Many scientists predict that the entire North Polar ice cap may be completely gone during summer months in the first term of the next President. Sea levels are rising, fires are raging, storms are stronger. Military experts warn us our national security is threatened by massive waves of climate refugees destabilizing countries around the world, and scientists tell us the very web of life is endangered by unprecedented extinctions.”
Good and bad news related to the melting of the North Polar Ice Cap. The good news is that petroleum exploration and drilling will be facilitated. The bad news is the potential damage to Santa’s Toys for Tots factory.
Question: Who uses more “dirty and dangerous fossil fuel” than the high Priest?
So do we get an update on the guy paddling his kayak to the pole? Or has he packed it in? Could always convert it to a sled and press on? Is there a journalist out there who can follow up on that one? Matty, Perth
Now that I quite cropping the image of the NSIDC daily graph of the melt progress, I don’t get so much jiggling when I scroll through the images since mid-month. That melt line looks like it’s getting very close to last year’s melt. If it hits, you can be sure we’ll hear all about it, even though it’s the warm waters coming into the Arctic from the Atlantic that’s doing much of the damage and not the myth of warm air {even Meier described the air this year as cooler than last}.
First time in a thousand years? I think not.
Has anyone thought THC/global conveyor/gulf stream could be responsible for climate change. I should work like a radiator/engine system. the equator has maximum heat and insulation, so the faster the energy flows to the high latitudes the more cooler the system runs. The radiator gets hotter though. It would explain why the arctic ice melted while global temps started cooling. It could also explain la nina/el nino and ice ages. The heat transfer would also enable those massive glacial ice sheet to form in a cool and dry ice age environment while making south east europe inhabitable for all those neanderthals!
“The ice in the Arctic Ocean is at near historic lows, and breaks records every couple of years due to human-caused global warming, the scientists at NSIDC say.”
WOW, what power us humans have to destroy the entire world! Kaboom! And to destroy it with the same gas that we exhale…..I guess it’s all a path of evolution. Too much exhaling and on with the next spices. What a joke.
Off topic here but at 7:43 pm central daylight time the Weather Chanel announced that one of their scientist had a study on going that discovered the human finger print of AGW on the number and strength of the tropical storms this year due to the excessive heat in the oceans due to warming. Here we go again. Don’t ya love it when a plan hatches. I wonder at the audacity of these people and their claims.
Bill Derryberry
Oh, so it was warmer only some thousands of years ago? And we survived?
I’m a bit sketchy on geography. Is that north pole place anywhere near Boston Massachusetts? My corpulent frame will be conveyed to Heathrow airport tomorrow for onward transmission to Boston and then Mystic & Noank Connecticut. Assuming that is the same general area as the north pole, please arrange for the ice to take a small rest, ten days should do it (assuming I’m allowed into the country now that I have been “outed” as a sceptic). Thank you.
It would have been the first time in thousands of years that the most northerly place on the planet would have been ice-free.
You mean like this?
HMS Superb, USS Billfish, and USS Sea Devil in a North Pole rendezvous in 1987
Towards the end of the article, Meier states:
“To recover to the ice levels of the 1980s would require many years in a row of cool conditions, and that isn’t going to happened under global warming conditions.”
Yeah, right. That picture was from 1987. It looks like there’s a lot more ice now than then.
“We only have about two or three weeks more of ice melt, and it’s not going to make it to the North Pole,” Meier said.
Do I detect a degree of regret or sadness that the melt wouldn’t go as far as they had predicted/hoped/”feared”?
Don’t you love how they claim historic lows and breaking records but neglect to mention that their history and records only go back to 1979, only a period of about 30 years. The last time the PDO flipped (other than the recent flip) was in 1977, a few years before the beginning of official recorded history. They claim the Northwest Passage will soon be open to shipping for the first time in “history”. I guess the wooden RCMP schooner St. Roche sailing though the Northwest Passage from west to east in one season in 1944 was just a fairy tale.
(assuming I’m allowed into the country now that I have been “outed” as a sceptic).
Probably a higher percent in the US than where you come from . . .
Although i think it has less to do with scientific knowledge and more nonacceptance of gas prices.
evanjones, are you even Evan Jones?
‘the first time in thousands of years’ Sorry, I didn’t get the memo, what did man do 1000 years to cause AGW ?
At least we’ve gone from “never before in human history” to “first time in thousands of years.”
Yes, Bill in Vigo, I saw that, it was outrageous. They showed some kind of graph that supposedly proved Global warming was responsible for snow in China and floods in India and the long track of Fay over Florida. The idiot took a balloon and squeezed it to show how high pressure was made stationary by warming! The weather channel is really a joke.
So the North Pole was thawed in 1987, the Northwest passage open in 1944, and there are indeed plenty of words for “robin” in the Inuit languages.
Is anybody keeping count or a file of these, um, lies by the media? They seem to be piling up faster than and iceberg melting into the Titantic.
We can only hope. Then we won’t have to hear any more of this complete garbage.
So many polar bears must have died already this year. The Arctic ocean must simply be littered with their corpses. No? Really? None at all? Dammit! I’ll have to get another SUV!
Al Gore told me that all the ice would be gone by the beginning of the next presidential term. How could he be wrong?
Notice how it realy melted faster this past week. Think it might have had something to do with all the “hot air” rising out of Denver?
Robert Austin (19:03:46) :
“I guess the wooden RCMP schooner St. Roche sailing though the Northwest Passage from west to east in one season in 1944 was just a fairy tale.”/em>
Since it didn’t happen it fits my definition of a fairy tale!
sorry Phil but Wiki disagrees with you.
“In 1940, Canadian RCMP officer Henry Larsen was the second to sail the passage, crossing west to east, from Vancouver to Halifax. More than once on this trip, it was unknown whether the St. Roch a Royal Canadian Mounted Police “ice-fortified” schooner would survive the ravages of the sea ice. At one point, Larsen wondered “if we had come this far only to be crushed like a nut on a shoal and then buried by the ice.” The ship and all but one of her crew survived the winter on Boothia Peninsula. Each of the men on the trip was awarded a medal by Canada’s sovereign, King George VI, in recognition of this notable feat of Arctic navigation.
Later in 1944, Larsen’s return trip was far more swift than his first; the 28 months he took on his first trip was significantly reduced, setting the mark for having traversed it in a single season. The ship followed a more northerly partially uncharted route, and it also had extensive upgrades.”
Matt Lague said
“So do we get an update on the guy paddling his kayak to the pole? Or has he packed it in? Could always convert it to a sled and press on? Is there a journalist out there who can follow up on that one?”
For an update go to:
http://www.lewispugh.com/expeditions.html
Lewis Pugh (the kayaker) said
“On 30 August I will attempt to kayak from the Island of Spitsbergen (in Northern Europe) across the Arctic Ocean into the Arctic ice pack. I am undertaking the expedition to highlight the dramatic melting of the sea ice.
This year the ice is the thinnest on record.”
So he is leaving tomorrow. Note: He is only saying he is going to the Arctic ice pack.